Yesterday the dominating topic of conversation was Apple’s release of the iPad. Alot of people were speculating about how it would look and what it would do but the actual release went something like the third Matrix flick. The ideas of speculation were better and more exciting than the real thing.

Now that’s a harsh comparison.  The third Matrix movie was terrible at best and should have never been made.  That’s not the case with the iPad.  Once the tech world gets over the fact that it’s not a write-on supercomputer that brushes your teeth while high-five’ng your iPhone they’ll come around.

The truth is the iPad is a natural progression of digital media.  This is your new favorite book or an interesting magazine you read on the toilet. It’s the morning paper and your email you read while eating breakfast.  You iPhone was cool but tiny.  Your laptop was powerful but bulky.  The iPad feels more like traditional media than anything we’ve had before.  And at $500 most of us can have one!

Come one, you weren’t expecting the iPad to be that cheap (I wasn’t).  Especially if you had envisioned a keyboardless laptop.

So what’s next:  a stylus?  a bigger screen?
Maybe, but I’ll bet it’s a low wall outlet in your bathroom.

I think everyone has a Christmas list these days and the decision of “what to buy” can be a significant challenge. It’s fun to give a expensive gift or one that might possibly excite the recipient, but the truth is, most of what we give and receive over the Christmas holiday is completely worthless to us.

It can take serious effort to find that perfect give and it’s easy just to buy something, anything. You’ve got a $30 budget and you’ll give a $30 gift. I’d rather just get a gift card than have you simply guess at what I might like. That may sound shallow but it’s honest. I think of my home as a storage box that holds a specific amount of stuff. Currently it’s more full than I’d like which means anything coming in must either replace something or leave quickly. I keep that in mind when I’m Christmas shopping for others and it helps quite a bit.

So let’s see this in action. First, if you’ve got no idea to begin with then the best option my be perishables. You can get something tasty at any budget and they only occupy space for a short amount of time. Okay, longer for others. Consider going for quality of quantity. When you receive a small but fancy box of chocolates you’re probably getting a true splurge. I’m never going to buy a box of Godiva chocolates for myself. It’s just not going to happen. So if I receive one as a gift it’s a small luxury. You’ll be hard pressed to find another $20 gift that I’ll refer to as a luxury.

If you’re better acquainted with the person you’re shopping for then buying something a little more specific may be in order. Instead of adding to their collection or giving them the latest whatever, think about finding something to replace. I gave my father a set of towels a few years back and admittedly it wasn’t the most exciting gift but I knew his towels were straight up raggedy. He could got out and buy towels on his own at any time but he hadn’t. And even though he didn’t jump for joy when he opened that gift I knew he appreciate it later and I can tell you he’s still using them today.

Now I’m not advocating that all your gifts be common household items. I think clever gifts are fantastic but they do require a savvy shopper and often a larger budget. If it’s your wife you may better stick to the jewelry counter but for the rest of us…

This should be old news to you by now but in case it isn’t, Walmart , yes the hyphen is gone, has updated their logo. I’ve seen a good bit of blog action on this subject and it’s all been negative. Even Dwell magazine listed it as an example of bad design. Now I can think of plenty of reasons not to shop at Walmart and generally this company is not known for good design of any kind. But to be fair I think this rebranding deserves a second opinion.

As you can see the old logo was a clunky sans-serif with a star that replaced the hyphen in the early nineties. Not exactly inspiring, but that’s what we expect from the store ubiquitous with low prices, low quality and lots of it. Apparently Walmart is trying to step it up a notch in the design department, no doubt to combat Target’s fantastic harnessing of good design (and even better commercials) and hopefully shed their lack-luster image.

The new logo incorporates what I feel is a wonderful sans-serif font that’s as friendly as it is modern and puts it in America’s favorite color - blue. I especially like the flow of the r into the t at the end and I don’t have anything bad to say about the kerning. The little starburst sun thingy is pretty generic but lets not forget who this logo belongs to. It’s unique enough that, when used alone, you’ll still think Walmart after about the fifth time you see it. I say this logo is a success and that to me is good design.

I’ve been threatening to bore the web public with my opinions for some time now and today is that day.  I suppose you’ll want to know a little about the man behind the curtain so here goes.  My name is Aaron Deckler and I’m a design junkie.  The sort of person who obsesses over fine details and has a very hard time accepting anything less than right. I’ve been designing for a living for about 4+ years now and constantly strive to be as good at this as possible.  I consider myself a designer, first and foremost, but I also take pride in front-end development.  I reside in a killer little town called Austin Texas where just driving around taking in the scenery puts a smile on my face.  I’m into design of all kinds including furniture, architecture, graphic works and pretty much anything else that fits the description.  As you might imagine I’m also a bit of a music snob.  Leading up to my design career I owned a small record label, Circular Records, and a digital recording studio now called Lava Studios.  We produced primarily hip-hop with a side of trip-hop.  Doing album covers (poorly) was my foray into graphic design.  These days my playlists mostly consist of indie rock and downtempo but I still enjoy a proper hip-hop recording.

I’ve created this blog to offer some opinion on design, the web and other related topics but be prepared to see the occasional music/film/arts post - I do live in Austin after all.  I imagine I’ll be doing the majority of the writing around here but I’ll try to drag in industry experts, such as my buddy Mitch Wilson, and maybe some other local flavor as well.  So stay tuned.